Media Releases

PMO Press Release: Appointments/Reappointments to the Singapore International Commercial Court

PMO
PRESS RELEASE

APPOINTMENTS/REAPPOINTMENTS
TO THE SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCIAL COURT

The President of the Republic of Singapore, in accordance with Article 95(4) (C) of the Constitution, has appointed four
new International Judges (IJs) to the Singapore International Commercial Court
(SICC) for a period of three years commencing 5 January 2018. They will be
sworn in on 8 January 2018 in a ceremony at the Istana.

2.The newly appointed IJs who will hear transnational
commercial cases at the SICC are as follows:

a)Justice Robert Shenton
French (Australia);

b)Lord David Edmond Neuberger of Abbotsbury (UK);

c)The Hon. Sir Jeremy Lionel Cooke (UK) and

d)The Right Honourable Beverley
Marian McLachlin, P.C.(Canada)

Justice Robert Shenton French (Australia)

3.Justice Robert French was a Judge of
the Federal Court of Australia for about 22 years before being appointed the
Chief Justice of Australia in 2008. After his retirement as Chief Justice in
January 2017, he accepted the appointment of non-permanent Judge in the Hong
Kong Court of Final Appeal. Justice French has a special interest in
intellectual property, competition, commercial and public law.

Lord David Edmond Neuberger of Abbotsbury
(UK)

4.Lord Neuberger graduated from Oxford
University and was called to the Bar in 1974. He was appointed Queen’s Counsel
in 1987. In 1996, he was appointed to the Bench and became a Judge of the Court
of Appeal in 2004. Lord Neuberger was President of the UK Supreme Court from
2012 to 2017 and has extensive experience in most areas of law including
commercial law.

The Hon. Sir Jeremy Cooke (UK)

5.Graduating from Oxford University, Sir
Jeremy Cooke was called to the Bar in 1976 and appointed Queen’s Counsel in
1990. He was appointed High Court Judge, Queen’s Bench, Commercial Court in
2001 and retired in 2016 after 15 years on the Bench. He served as the Judge in
charge of the Commercial Court for a time and is highly respected for his expertise
in commercial law. He is also known for his expertise in energy, insurance
& reinsurance, professional negligence, shipping & maritime law, international
trade, banking and derivatives. Justice Cooke is currently an International
Judge with the Dubai International Financial Centre.

The Right Honourable
Beverley Marian McLachlin, P.C. (Canada)

6.Former Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin is the longest serving Chief Justice of
Canada. She retired in December 2017 after 28 years at the Supreme Court
of Canada. CJ McLachlin was appointed to the
Bench of the Supreme Court of British Columbia in 1981, the Court of Appeal in
1985 and then as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia in
1988. In 1989, she was appointed Puisne Justice
of the Supreme Court of Canada and then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of
Canada in 2000. She is currently a member of the Queen’s Privy Council for
Canada. CJ McLachlin has dealt with administrative
law, family law, commercial and business law, press rights and intellectual
property.

​

Reappointment of 11 International
Judges

7. At the same time, the following IJs at
the SICC will be reappointed for another three years:

8.The IJs were first appointed on 5
January 2015 for a three year term ending 4 January 2018, with the exception of
Justice Bernard Eder who was appointed on 7 May 2015 and whose term will end on
6 May 2018. Justice IrmgardGriss, whose
term at the SICC also expires on 4 January 2018 has not sought and will not be offered reappointment
as she had been elected to the Austrian Parliament.

9.More information on the 11 IJs who have
been reappointed to the SICC can be found in Annex A.

10. With the above appointments and
reappointments, the number of IJs at the SICC stands at 15.

PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE

3 JANUARY 2018

Annex A

Write-ups on the
reappointed IJs

Justice Patricia
Bergin

Justice Bergin retired from the Supreme Court
of New South Wales on 29 January 2017 having been appointed in March 1999.Between 2003 and March 2009 she served as
Commercial List Judge administering the work of the busiest Commercial Court in
Australia. Justice Bergin was appointed Chief Judge in Equity in March 2009 and
served in that role until her retirement.

Justice Roger Giles

Justice Giles graduated from the University
of Sydney with a BA in 1961 and LLB (Hons) in 1965,
and from the Oxford University with a BCL (Hons) in
1968. After a time in articles and as a solicitor, he was admitted to the NSW
Bar in 1971 and became Queen's Counsel in 1983. In 1988, he was appointed to
the Supreme Court of NSW, becoming Chief Judge of the Commercial Division in
1994 and a Judge of the Court of Appeal in 1998. He retired from that
Court in December 2011. Justice Giles principally practiced in equity and
commercial law, but the Court of Appeal took him into most areas of civil and
criminal law. He is also a Judge of the Dubai International Financial
Centre Courts.

Justice Dyson Heydon

Justice Heydon was a Judge of the New South Wales Court of Appeal from
2000 to 2003, before he was elevated to the High Court of Australia. He retired
from the High Court of Australia in 2013 and is currently a Barrister in New
South Wales. He is also an Arbitrator of the Singapore International
Arbitration Centre and the Institute of Arbitrators and Mediators Australia.

In 1964, Justice Heydon obtained a BA with First Class Honours in
History and the University Medal from the University of Sydney. He was the NSW
Rhodes Scholar the same year. He obtained a BA (Oxon) (Jurisprudence) with
First Class Honours and the Martin Wronker Prize
(shared) in 1966. He obtained a BCL (Oxon) with First Class Honours and the Vinerian Scholarship in 1967. In academia, Justice Heydon
was a Fellow in Law at Keble College Oxford from 1967 to 1973, and a Professor
of Law at the University of Sydney Law School from 1973 to 1981 (Dean from 1978
to 1979). He then practised at the New South Wales Bar from 1979 to 2000
(Queen’s Counsel from 1987). He was Royal Commissioner into Trade Union,
Governance and Corruption in 2014 to 2015. He has also written over thirty
books and many articles on equity, evidence, contract, tort and restrictive
practices.

Justice Dominique T. Hascher

Justice Hascher was appointed to the Supreme
Judicial Court in France as Judge in 2012. He received a Bachelor of Laws from
the University of Paris in 1977 and a Master of Laws from Harvard University in
1983 after earning a Fulbright scholarship. He joined the French Judiciary in
1982 as trial court judge before working for the Ministry of Justice in 1986.
From 1990 to 1998, he served as the General Counsel and Deputy Secretary General
of the ICC International Court of Arbitration. In 1998, he was appointed as
Court of Appeal Judge before being promoted to Presiding Judge in 2008.

Justice Hascher has also lectured at the Hague Academy of International Law in 1999 and was
visiting Professor at University College London in 2005 and at the University
of Texas at Austin in 2007. He is President of the French Society of
Comparative Law (2016), Honorary Bencher of Gray’s
Inn (2005) and a member of the American Law Institute (2007). Justice Hascher was also President of the Franco-British Lawyers
Society from 2005 to 2008.

Justice Anselmo Reyes

Justice Reyes was appointed as a Judge of the
Court of First Instance in Hong Kong and served in that capacity from 2003 to
2012. As a Judge, his specialisation was construction, arbitration, commercial
and admiralty matters. Justice Reyes obtained a BA (Law), LLM and PhD in
Law from Cambridge University in 1982, 1983 and 1987 respectively, and was
called to both the Hong Kong and the Singapore Bar. He was appointed Senior
Counsel in Hong Kong in 2001. He is currently a Professor of Legal Practice in
the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong and is an active practitioner
in commercial arbitration. He was Representative of the Hague Conference on
Private International Law Asia Pacific Regional Office in Hong Kong from 2013
to 2017. He is also an Overseas Bencher of the Inner Temple.

Justice Yasuhei
Taniguchi

Justice Taniguchi has been an academic, teaching
at various universities in Japan and other countries like the United States,
Hong Kong, Australia, France and China. He has been Professor Emeritus at Kyoto
University, Japan, since 1998. Justice Taniguchi is currently a Counsel at
Matsuo Kosugi, Tokyo.

He has held various positions such as
Chairperson of the Appellate Body of WTO, Council Member of ICCA, President of
the Japan Association of Arbitrators, and Member of the Law Revision Commission
of the Ministry of Justice of Japan. He was also Chairman of the Rule Making
Committee of the Japan Commercial Arbitration Association to draft the new
Administrative and Procedural Rules for Arbitration under the Uncitral Arbitration Rules and the totally amended Rules of
Commercial Arbitration of JCAA.

Justice Vivian Arthur
Ramsey

Justice Ramsey served for nine years on the
bench as a Judge of the High Court (Queen’s Bench Division) of England and
Wales, including a three-year period as Judge in charge of the Technology and
Construction Court, until 2014. He was also judge in charge of the
implementation of the Jackson Reforms in the courts in England and Wales from
2012 to 2014.

He was educated in England and the United
States, and then studied Engineering Science and Economics at Oxford before
becoming a chartered civil engineer. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal
Academy of Engineering in 2013.

In 1979, he was called to the English Bar after
studying law at the City University and Inns of Court School of Law. He was
appointed a Queen’s Counsel in 1992 and a Bencher of Middle Temple in 2002.
Before his appointment to the bench, he specialised internationally in the area
of construction, engineering and technology disputes both in international
arbitration and in courts outside the UK.

He is the co-editor of Keating on Construction
Contracts, now in its 10th edition. He is also a Visiting Professor at the
Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College, London.

Justice Bernard Rix

Justice Rix has extensive judicial experience at
both first instance and appellate levels of court, as a Lord Justice of Appeal
in the Court of Appeal of England and Wales from 2000 to 2013; as the Judge in
charge of the Commercial Court of London from 1998 to 1999; and a Judge of High
Court of Justice from 1993 to 2000. He is recognised for implementing the Woolf
Reforms to civil procedure in the London Commercial Court, and for re-drafting
the Guide and Practice Directions of that court. Before his appointment to the
bench, he specialised in international commercial law and was appointed Queen’s
Counsel in 1981. He is currently a Justice of the Court of Appeal of the Cayman
Islands and an arbitrator. He is also a Professor of International Commercial
Law at Queen Mary, University of London.

Justice Simon Joe Thorley

Justice Thorley Q.C. studied Jurisprudence at
Oxford University from 1968-1971 and received the degree of MA (Hons). He was called to the Bar of England and Wales by the
Honourable Society of The Inner Temple in 1972 and then began practice at the
Intellectual Property Bar. He was appointed Queen’s Counsel in
1989. Justice Thorley has more than 40 years of experience in Intellectual
Property and related law, and was a leading practitioner in that field until he
ceased practice in 2014. He was a Deputy High Court Judge in England and Wales
and was also the Deputy Chairman of the Copyright Tribunal in the United Kingdom
for eight years. He was a co-editor of the 13th-15th
Editions of Terrell on the Law of Patents, a standard work of reference on UK
patent law. Justice Thorley served as Treasurer of the Inner Temple in 2013.

Justice Carolyn Berger

Justice Carolyn Berger was a Justice on the
Delaware Supreme Court, the highest Court in the State of Delaware from 1994 to
2014. Before that, she served for 10 years on the Delaware Court of Chancery,
the business trial court in Delaware that specialises in corporate and
commercial disputes.

Before serving on the Delaware Courts, Justice Berger was a Deputy
Attorney General in the Delaware Attorney General’s office and a corporate
litigator in the firm Skadden, Arps,
Slate, Meagher and Flom. She also holds a Masters Degree in Elementary Education from Boston
University School of Education and taught public school in Boston,
Massachusetts, before attending law school.

Born in New York, she received a Juris Doctor degree from Boston
University School of Law in 1976 and an honorary Doctor of Laws from Widener
University School of Law in 1996.

Justice Henry Bernard
Eder

Justice Eder was formerly a Judge of the High Court of England and
Wales, and was assigned to the Queen’s Bench Division and the Commercial Court
from 2011 to 2015. Prior to such appointment, he was a Barrister in Essex
Court Chambers of London from 1975 to 2010, and was appointed Queen’s Counsel
in 1990. From 1999 to 2003, he was a Visiting Professor at University
College London. He is widely recognised as an expert in the areas of
commercial disputes, civil claims and international arbitration involving all
aspects of commercial law including banking, shipping, sale
of goods, commodities, oil/gas and insurance. He is currently the Senior
Editor of Scrutton on Charterparties
and Bills of Lading. He has rejoined Essex
Court Chambers as an arbitrator/mediator.